Resentencings for killers of Chesterfield man could be a year away

Although Matthew Landry's killers this week gained new sentencings for their felony murder convictions, they will not be resentenced until late this year or 2014.

Robert Taylor was granted a new sentencing in an appeals court ruling released Friday that mimicked the decision announced two days earlier for Ihab Maslamani. The court granted the redo's based on last June's U.S. Supreme Court decision that reversed mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, calling them cruel and unusual punishment.

Both Maslamani, 17 at the time of the slaying, and Taylor, 16 at the time, will likely seek to appeal the affirmation of their many other jury convictions to the Michigan Supreme Court. So it will be at least eight months and likely longer until they can be sentenced again, according to assistant Macomb prosecutor William Cataldo, who tried both defendants, and Valerie Newman, Maslamani's appellate attorney.

"It'll be next fall or next winter," Cataldo said.

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The applications to appeal to the state high court are due 56 days from the appeals court rulings. After that, the court typically accepts or rejects the application within six to nine months, Newman said. If those applications to file are denied, Macomb County Circuit Court can begin the process of conducting new sentencings for the young killers. Probation officials likely will interview them again for an updated presentence investigation report.

Cataldo said he was pleasantly surprised that Taylor's ruling came quickly after Maslamani's even though Taylor was sentenced four months after Maslamani.

He prefers that the pair are sentenced again together for the sake of sparing additional grief for the Landry family.

"It'll be easier for them to go at one time," he said.

Macomb prosecutors will seek life without parole for the duo. He expects that Matthew Landry's mother, Doreen, will make a victim impact statement like she did in 2010 and 2011.

"I'm certain that will make another impassioned plea to ensure that both of these defendants never see the light of day again," Cataldo said.

Judge Diane Druzinski has the option to sentence each one of them up to a minimum number of years up to life or renew the life-without-parole term.

The pair are currently serving in state prison for abducting Landry, 21, of Chesterfield Township, on Aug. 9, 2009, from outside the Eastpointe sandwich shop and killing him with a single gunshot to his head the next day in an abandoned home in Detroit.

Maslamani, now 21, in the following days robbed a Harrison Township bank and attempted a carjacking in the parking lot of the Walmart in Roseville, after which he was caught by police.

In addition to first-degree, felony murder, Maslamani was convicted of conspiracy to commit carjacking and kidnapping, and felony firearm related to the Landry abduction. He was convicted of bank robbery, two counts of armed robbery, kidnapping and four counts of felony firearm for the Flagstar Bank incident and carjacking, felony firearm and receiving and concealing a firearm for the failed carjacking.

Taylor, now 20, was convicted of six counts for his role in the Landry case, including felony murder.

The appeals panel was the same for both cases: Judges Kathleen Jansen, E. Thomas Fitzgerald and Kirsten Frank Kelly.